THE PETERITE Vol. LXI I
OCTOBER, 1971
No. 385
EDITORIAL Two years after the death of Kenneth Rhodes the new stalls in the east end of Chapel were dedicated in July by Bishop Harland, a distinguished Old Peterite, formerly Bishop of Durham. The stalls are a fitting memorial from the Old Peterites to Rhodes, who was regular in his worship all his life; reverent without any trace of smugness; critical of Chapel changes, sometimes amused, but always tolerant where sincerity was apparent. His anger was only aroused when he sometimes saw ignorance masquerading as agnosticism, and surly indifference as religious doubt. For he well knew that it takes much intelligent and mature thought to produce an honest agnostic; but in general, the isolated individual who ostentatiously avoided taking any part in a service was an object of pity rather than of wrath. To Rhodes, Chapel was part of the discipline of the School society, where the individual could seek his own measure of communication and comfort, but where the schoolboy maturing to manhood should receive steady instruction by familiar practice; instruction that ideally would be complementary to what was learnt at home, but which sometimes might be the substitute for what was not given elsewhere. Rhodes, with his questioning mind, would not question the need for the schoolboy to be instructed in the Christian faith, nor the duty of the School to undertake the instruction. He was well aware that this view might be called outdated, but he would not consider that the exploration of faith could be any more dated than the investigation of science. The sin was the closing of the mind. So the old question comes up from time to time: 'Why compulsory Chapel?' The argument can be endless. The answer is probably tied up with education generally. Who is to decide what should be learnt, and what principles are there to guide the decision? From Plato to Chairman Mao the basic theory of education has accepted that there is a body to be trained : hence the need for exercise; a mind to be developed: hence the need for a varied corpus of knowledge which the mind can be trained to assimilate and to use; and a spirit to be satisfied : hence the Thoughts of the Chairman, and the faith in Collectivism that the Soviet system hopes to inculcate in its best brains. In the West we have been left for the time being thinking that while our physical and mental development moves with the times, the faith in which our culture was built up must be outdated because it is not a product of our age. It is to be wondered how long the Chairman's thoughts will influence opinion after two thousand years; yet the modern Chinaman is expected to accept them as his article of faith. 1
